Magic Lanterns are essentially pre-electric slide projectors. They hold a unique position in the history of gadgets, being popular at the end of the nineteenth century when cheap mass produced decoration became available. They represent one of the last machines to be designed like furniture rather than gadgets.

The dirty little secret of design is that ‘good taste’ equals expensive - when everybody could afford decoration, minimalist design with expensive materials became a way to display wealth (the early modernist, Barcelona pavilion had stainless steel columns, onyx walls and travertine floors) contrary to legend, modernism was originally product for the elite, not the masses.

Magic Lanterns are pre-modernist, richly decorated items that are very different from the design of today’s gadgets, which look like their design is dictated by function, but in reality (like an expensive Porsche designed to travel at speeds which it is illegal to do so) is dictated by a fetishized culture of the machine.

This is the most interesting Magic Lantern in this set, from a design perspective. at one and the same time, it represents one of the last consciously decorative styled gadget types and on the other it represents a great example of Art Nouveau, which broke the rules of classical design and paved the way for modernism.

Before moving pictures, multiple lensed Magic Lanterns could be used to display transitions or even moving effects such as the popular ‘rat swallower’. Shown here is an impressive three lensed device or triunial lantern.

Looking at this object and there is no doubt that the design inspiration is different from today’s slide projectors. It is designed as a decorative gas lamp that happens to project slides, rather than a machine which happens to contain a lamp.

This stunningly restored lamp shown at the Mid-Somerset Camera Club shows just how large lantern lenses often were, and how they were designed in the same way as brass microscopes from up to 200 years earlier.

Magic Lanterns were often used to instruct masonic rituals, a significant factor in their early adoption. Co-incidenctally, traveling Magic Lantern shows were performed by migrant technicians, mirroring the origins of masonry in migrant stone masons.